1998

Large Hadron Collider

What if scientists want to collide two streams of protons together traveling at nearly the speed of light? Why: To discover new subatomic particles. Built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) between 1998 and 2008, the Large Hadron Collider, or LHC, is the largest proton accelerator ever and it exceeds all expectations in terms of size, complexity, cost, and engineering achievement. It actually accomplished its design goal—it proved the existence of a particle called the Higgs Boson. This is as big as Big Science gets.

Take, for example, the collider’s tunnel, which they began digging in 1998. The LHC is housed in a huge tunnel bored at least 165 feet (50 meters) underground. The tunnel is shaped like a ring 17 miles (27.3 km) in diameter. The tunnel’s interior is a concrete pipe 12 feet (3.6 meters) in diameter. This tunnel alone is an amazing accomplishment.

Inside the tunnel there is a steel pipe, and inside the pipe there are two smaller tubes that act as channels for the speeding protons. These tubes contain a near total vacuum. Two counter-rotating proton streams accelerate to nearly the speed of light in the vacuum. To curve the streams through the ring, more 1,200 helium cooled superconducting magnets help bend the streams around the ring. Each magnet is massive, weighing approximately 60,000 pounds (27,200 kg).

Then there are the detectors, where the actual science occurs. The proton beams cross and collide head on inside these detectors. The largest, called Atlas, is roughly the size of half of a football field and 82 feet (25 meters) tall. Atlas weighs 15 million pounds (6.8 million kg). It is like a gigantic 3D movie camera for subatomic particles. Its job is to track the particles that get created when protons collide. The camera produces approximately 1,000 million million bytes (1 petabyte) of data per second. Atlas alone would be a major engineering achievement, and Atlas is just one of several detectors.

All of this engineering wonderment comes together in the LHC. It truly is one of the greatest things engineers have ever built.

SEE ALSO Concrete (1400 AAA), Tunnel Boring Machine (1845), 3D Glasses (1952), Neodymium Magnet (1982).

View of the Large Hadron Collider tunnel sector 3–4.